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Colleagues
My response to the excessive chat about attachments is to suggest some may like to talk about something else. I've been thinking about how I (we?) teach decision making. This is as part of a management course that doesn't look in detail at quantitative analysis or OR.

Decision making is one of about ten topics in a one semester management course. For this topic we look at: different types of decisions; complexity and decision traps such as heuristics, framing errors and escalation of commitment; comparison of the classical and administrative decision models with a couple of brief examples; and wrap up with the pros and cons of using groups.

The question I have follows one students often ask. Can you identify a bad decision? (By corollary, can you identify a good decision?) It's easy in hindsight but what about foresight? For instance, was Napoleon's (or Hitler's) invasion of Russia a bad decision at the time?

So I'm looking for examples that are preferably:
- in a modern organisational setting;
- detail one or some clear decisions;
- don't involve too much pluralism (so politics is out for the most part);
- can be evaluated with foresight;
- are written up in quotable sources.

The Bay of Pigs (Janis, Irving L. (1982) Groupthink Second edition, Houghton Mifflin) is a good case. Desperate to hit Castro's Cuba, Kennedy assembled a group of like minded experts who ended up betting the reputation of the US, not to mention the lives of several hundred exiles, on the assumption that the people would rise against the communist regime. But students find it dated and (from this side of the pond) alien.

Anything better?

John Naylor
Liverpool Business School
Liverpool John Moores University
UK

Suggest you look at case method teaching--most cases exercise the decision
making process which should be at the heart of the objectives in a management
education program.

Hi...

Three years ago in a list whose membership included professional
psychologists, a flame war occurred, over some comments made about
"postmodernism". I offered the followed comments then which might be
appropriate to protagonist and antagonist alike over this attachment
thing.

My 1996 post went as follows:
"I am curious about how those on the list who have conducted
research on flaming behavior within CMC would characterize the
exchanges that went on in connection with the entire postmodern
related postings. Would those same exchanges be considered
antagonistic if we were in a F2F context? It seems to me that without
the normal cues that are part of F2F communication a simple word or
phrase or comment becomes amplified disproportionately. Does
electronic media do that? What appears as flames in CMC might not
be flames in F2F.

It is a smart thing to lighten up a bit in the context of a list and
perhaps enter into a bit of self reflexivity. After all this is only a
list.

Who's egos are being bruised and if they are why? If people on the
list want to REALLY get into what flaming is I will be glad to take
you to the Red Hook section of Brooklyn or the 125th street area of
Manhattan.

Getting back into self reflexivity. If we are really concerned with
furthering knowledge it would be interesting to start with ourselves
in this very non threatening environment of a list and hear in a
testimonial fashion as to what got you upset and why."

Mike Chumer
Head Media and Digital Services, Rutgers Dana Library
Faculty, School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies